our sins who, when he was reviled, reviled not again: was made perfect through suffering, and won and wore a crown of thorns.

WAS IT SUCCESS OR FAILURE?

A WARM DISCUSSION ABOUT A DEAD MAN'S LIFE.

He had been a good man, a Christian according to the accepted idea of the church, regular in the routine duties of life, correct in his habits and kind to his neighbors, whom he was always ready to serve. He loved his neighbor better than himself. Often he let his own vineyard lie waste while he worked in theirs. Everybody spoke of his warm heart, and said there never was a better man in the town. But he did not get ahead; he and his family lived from hand to mouth; nothing was laid up for a time of need. He borrowed when anybody would lend. And when his health was feeble and his family expenses increased, his friends helped him, and he had not spirit enough left to feel bad about it. He limped along from year to year, getting a little lower and still lower. His wife and daughter privately sewed and sold their work. Only a very few knew the situation. He died respectably, and was buried in the midst of sincerely mourning people who never knew anything against him, and rather liked him as a clever, well-meaning, kind-hearted man. Was his life a success?

A friend and I differed and agreed about it. We both thought him far from being a successful man, both felt that in many respects he was a failure. We differed as to the degree of his failure; and what it is that makes a man worthy of being called successful.

When my friend stood before a school of boys to address them, his way of stimulating them was to tell them, if they worked hard in school, and afterwards, they might one day be Mayor of the city, Governor of the State, and President of the United States. He also told them that the rich men of

the country were once poor, and by industry, perseverance, and hard work had made millions of money, and were now able to live like nabobs. Thus he taught the boys to aim at high office and great wealth as the true measure of success. Here we differed. I told him frankly and very plainly, that such talk to the boys was bad: it set before them a false standard of excellence: there was no virtue or merit in office or money, and neither of them was a fit object of pursuit as an end; they are to be sought only as the means of accomplishing something for the good of others and the glory of God. Then we went back to our poor dead friend's memory. I held that he just missed success in life.

"Just missed success!" he exclaimed. "Why what on earth do you call success, I would like to know? That man surely never came within a thousand miles of success."

Hold on," I replied. "Not quite so fast or so strong, if you please. I will preach a little. You have heard me preach, I guess."

"Yes, indeed. As Lamb said to Coleridge, I never heard you do anything else.”

That is rather hard, I said, but you have a totally mistaken notion as to true "success in life." And when you tell young men to aim at getting high office or great wealth, as the goal and sure measure of success, you mislead them just as you would if you say to a group of young women that success means to get a husband with many bags of gold, or a title to his name. You know that to put such an idea into a girl's head is worse than nonsense. And as only one man out of 50,000,000 of people can be President at one time, you would make it out that with that prize, as the measure of success, the many must fail while a few only succeed. Now you must settle first the right meaning of the word. In battle, victory is success, because victory is the object. Defeat is failure. To find a lost sheep is the object of search, and success is finding it. To miss it is failure. Speaking or writing for a prize makes success or failure very plain to him who striveth for the mastery. So if those prizes which you set before the young are the pearls of great price, the real end of the high

aspirations of the immortal soul of a brave, good man, then you are right and I am wrong. But I despise your idea. There is no religion, no truth, no good, no Christ in it. You preach a low, sordid, debasing doctrine that Epicurus or Heliogabalus might accept as orthodox, but Jesus, who became poor for our sakes, condemns in language that consumes the spirit of your gospel. My notion of the chief end of man is to be happy in doing good. Keep this object in view, and get your own living by some honest and useful occupation, and your life is a success. It will be a failure if you do not support yourself and those depending on you. Here is the difference between success and failure. Our dead friend had all the elements of success in him but one." “What was that, pray?”

He lacked one thing, and one only, and that was energy. Do you know what energy is?

'I think I do: perhaps you attach some meaning to it that I do not."

Energy is internal force: not physical, not mental or spiritual, except when we speak of that power working in us to will and do God's pleasure. Energy is the native force of character impelling us to action. The want of it is laziness. The two principles make all the difference in the world among men who otherwise are equally gifted for the battle and the race of life. Our dead friend was lazy. That is the plain word for the only vice he had. All his virtues, not even God's saving grace, made him anything to his family or society, to the church or the world. He was lazy. He was kind-hearted and sympathetic, and fluent in prayer, and had the gift of utterance and continuance in religious meetings. But he would not earn bread for his household, because he had not that force working in him which is just as essential to success in this life as divine grace is to the soul's salvation in the life to come. Books, essays, sermons, etc., are multiplied to define the means of success in life. They are mostly bad books, bad essays, and bad sermons. Because they proceed on the error that greatness of some sort, distinction, influence, riches or office is implied in success. It is not.

The good man or woman who in the common walks of life earns an honest living by useful work, is one of the pillars of the commonwealth, a defence or ornament to the State. Millions of such people make a great State. These are the salt of the earth: the saviours of society, the friends of God.

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But you needn't get excited about it: I can hear you just as well if you speak a little more softly."

I beg your pardon—but I would give you a realizing sense of what energy is: and I would like to know if my sermon has been a success?

"I will think it over. I am with you in the principle of the thing, and feel the force of what you say." Then you are half converted.

GAMBLING IN THE PARLOR

A MOTHER'S LETTER AND THE ANSWER.

"WHILE I am writing, the children, with two or three of their young friends, are at play in the parlor. The word play does not mean what it did when I was in my teens, as my children are now. Nor will I undertake to say that the plays of my younger days were more innocent and less dangerous than those now enjoyed by young people. I was brought up to regard the game of cards with decided aversion, as always associated more or less intimately with gambling. If every one playing cards was not actually gambling, it was supposed to lead to it, and if boys and girls became fond of the game, there was every reason to fear they would fall into that vice by and by. But now it is common to see card-playing among the amusements of the evening in the best of families. summer hotels all sorts of people, which must include good people, play cards all day long, especially when the weather keeps them in the house. I observe that they play for small sums of money, so very small as not to make it unpleasant to lose, and not large enough to cause any great anxiety to

At

win. The young people in the parlor at home, or in little circles in one another's houses, are in the habit of playing for favors,' trifling articles which they freely give and take in other social pastimes. Now they win them or lose them in a game of cards. My children and their young friends are playing for favors' now while I am writing; I am very anxious about it; they have grown so much wiser than their parents that they are sure there is no harm in it. They tell me that the children of ministers play in the same way; and what I say seems to be of no use. Do you think it is right? Will it be too much to ask you to give your opinion in one of your letters ?"

THE OPINION.

It is wrong to play cards, or any other game, for any stake, prize, money, goods, or anything of value, however small. It is not the amount won or lost in play that makes the game right or wrong. Only a very small-minded person would think it right to play for sixpence and wrong for a shilling. The difference is not in the stakes; the only question is the right or the wrong of playing for stakes at any time.

A clergyman riding in the country saw a packet lying in the road, and upon dismounting picked up a pack of cards. He was putting them in his pocket to take them home to amuse his children, when he said to himself, if I were to be thrown off and killed, and this pack of cards were found in my pocket, it would not read well in the newspapers. He threw them over the fence and rode on.

As I was brought up with the idea that playing cards is in itself wrong, I have never looked upon the game with any favor whatever. I have all along in life noticed that it is in the line that gambling takes from the first game where the player seeks to win a cent or a favor" or a shilling, up to the game or down to the game where a fortune is the stake to be lost or won. Up in the country the boys used to play cards in the barn, hiding away from parents who would forbid and punish them if they were found out. And I know that such habits of secret gambling were the beginnings of